Keep the Car Running
by krakens
Summary: They've blown up a government building, Illya's been shot, and the boys are still bickering while she tries to drive getaway.


Things start to go wrong in the "escape" portion of the evening, which is honestly where their plans are usually weakest. Gaby blames this primarily on the boys' inability to work together to come up with good ideas; Napoleon pathologically leans to the overly-complicated and Illya is a direct kind of man. It's a small miracle their team functions at all.

And right now, it's functioning _slowly_. They were supposed to be here seven minutes ago, which might seem like an insignificant length of time in any other situation, but every second that passes makes her imagination run just a little bit wilder.

She takes a deep breath and taps her fingers against the cool metal of the steering wheel. They'll figure something out, she reminds herself. They always do.

The second she thinks it, an explosion rocks the car, sending her heart leaping to her throat and her hand to the gearshift. It's hard to make out what's what in the aftermath of the bomb, but she spots them staggering down the hill side-by-side, one large misshapen figure rather than two separate ones. As soon as she sees them, she's raring to go, and by the time Napoleon pulls the car door open and stuffs Illya into the passenger seat, she's already pulling away from the kerb. He has to take a few long running strides to catch up with them before she slows down and lets him get into the car, but as soon as the door's closed she peels off down the road.

" _That_ wasn't very discreet," she says, raising her voice over the sound of the engine as she accelerates.

"Thank the Peril," Napoleon says before turning around in the back seat, aiming a careful shot out the back of the car. Gaby makes a sound of protest just before the back window shatters, but behind them a pursuit vehicle careens off the road, so she can't complain _too_ much.

"It worked, and you are not dead," Illya counters. "You should thank me."

"Remind me in the morning," Napoleon grouses, switching the rifle out for a handgun and dispatching a couple men on motorcycles who were getting dangerously close to catching up to them.

"Did you get the thing?" Gaby asks.

"Of course I got it," Napoleon says, tapping the roll of blueprints propped up in the seat next to him with the barrel of his gun before he goes back to firing out the back of the car.

" _We_ got it," Illya corrects gruffly.

"Let's sort out who gets the blame and who gets the glory after we've lost our new friends, why don't we?"

"There is nothing to figure out. It was because of your mistake we needed the bomb," Illya says.

"Bombs are never strictly _necessary_ ," Napoleon says, tone bitingly dry. "And you're the wrench in the works. I've been stealing things my entire life and I've never. Been. Caught." He punctuates each word with a gunshot.

"If that were true, you wouldn't be here," Illya says without missing a beat.

Napoleon takes a deliberate pause from his sharpshooting to turn around and face him. "You know what?" he begins, but he doesn't get the retort out, because Gaby slams her hands on the steering wheel, causing the car to swing side-to-side for a moment as they speed past the night-darkened cityscape.

"Enough," she says. "If you two don't stop bickering I'll leave you both on the side of the road."

That actually shuts them up for a few minutes; it's only once they've lost their tail that Napoleon turns around and settles into his seat.

"How's your shoulder?" he asks.

Illya just grunts in response, and it's only now that the adrenaline of the high-speed chase is wearing off that she spares him a glance. She can't quite stop the horrified, strangled noise that escapes her throat when she sees him. He's clutching his own shoulder, his hand red-streaked and his dark clothes soaked darker with blood.

"I'm fine," he assures her, and then after a beat he concedes: "I was shot."

She gapes for a moment. _I was shot,_ he says. Like it's a minor inconvenience.

"Should we pull over? Do something at least," she demands of Napoleon, who just shakes his head.

"Just get back to the hotel," he says. "It would be bad if we weren't there when Waverly contacts us." His tone is condescending, as if she's a child and this needs to be explained in very simple terms. Or as if he thinks she's being histrionic, which is a little unfair seeing as Illya is currently bleeding out in her passenger seat and she's the only person who seems concerned at all.

But still, she knows Napoleon is right, so she leaves her foot on the gas pedal.

* * *

They park the car in the alley behind the hotel they're staying in. Usually she'd take the time to ditch it so the busted windows didn't draw too much attention, but with more pressing matters at hand that'll have to wait.

The move through the lobby as quickly as they can manage, which is not very – Illya braces his weight on Gaby as if all that's wrong is he's had too much to drink, and Napoleon makes a charming comment to the concierge to divert her attention.

Once they've piled into the elevator at the far end of the lobby, Gaby feels him lean away from her. His hand, which had been slung around her shoulders, returns to the bullet wound, and he leans his head against the elevator wall, eyes screwed shut. It's the first real indication that he's in pain she's seen all evening, and as the elevator jumps to life she feels her stomach lurch uncomfortably.

"Does it hurt?" she asks, and immediately feels rather stupid. He might be stoic, but of course he's not immune to pain.

But he just looks down at her and offers her a smile, small though it is. "I've had much worse," he says.

It's meant to be an assurance, she knows, but it doesn't make her feel any better.

* * *

They go straight to Napoleon's door, not bothering with their separate rooms and cover identities. Gaby's pretty sure they've been made after tonight's mishaps anyway.

Napoleon disappears into the bedroom of his suite immediately. Gaby hovers by the sofa as Illya sits, injured shoulder drooping though he tries to keep his back straight.

" _Off_ the upholstery," Napoleon says when he comes back into the room, medical kit in hand. "God knows half our budget goes to ruined hotel furniture." (Napoleon does not like to let Illya forget that he and Gaby somehow racked up almost twelve hundred dollars in damages at that hotel in Rome; the fact is endlessly entertaining to him.)

Illya stands and re-seats himself on the coffee table, a distance of only a meter that seems to exhaust him all the same. As Napoleon rifles through the kit, Gaby shifts her weight from foot to foot.

"What can I do to help?" she asks.

"Towels. Hot water," Napoleon requests, and she grabs an ice bucket off the sideboard before retreating into the bathroom. She stays in there a little longer than is necessary, holding her hand under the tap as the water runs hot enough to scald. It hurts, but she can't bring herself to fill the bucket until she's sure that it's running as hot as it gets.

The scene she returns to is less than welcoming. Illya has stripped his shirt off and Napoleon has set about cleaning the truly gruesome-looking wound. Gaby stops dead in the doorway for a moment before crossing the room with as much conviction as she can manage. She drops the bucket and towels on the table next to them.

"What _happened_?" she demands, her hands clenched into fists.

"What I said. Things went south. We were being shot at," Napoleon says. "Sometimes you catch a bullet in this line of work."

"If I had not caught it in the shoulder you'd have caught it in the head," Illya says through his teeth.

"Yes, thank you," Napoleon says, sounding more annoyed than grateful. "At least it's a clean wound."

" _That's_ clean?" Gaby asks, perfectly incredulous.

"Well, he's still breathing, his heart's still beating, and – can you move your hand?" Napoleon asks. Illya makes a rude gesture in response. "See? He's fine."

"I think you're exaggerating," Gaby mutters, watching closely as Napoleon prepares the sutures. She can't quite make herself look as he begins stitching, instead studying Illya's face. He's gone quiet and that hasn't escaped her notice, but as Napoleon draws a stitch he hisses in something partway between pain and mild irritation.

"Sorry," Napoleon says.

"Do you even know what you're doing?" Gaby asks.

"Do you want to do it?" he snaps back. Gaby knows how to stitch up a ripped blouse, but suspects that this is somewhat different, and manages to bite her tongue. Napoleon had been a soldier before he was a spy, after all – he must've done this sort of thing before.

"Gaby? Stop," Napoleon says.

"Stop what?" she asks.

"Pacing."

"I'm not," she says, but it's only as she says it that she realizes she's been circling the scene like a panther ready to go in for the kill.

"You're making me nervous," he says in a tone contrary to that sentiment. "Hold still or go back to your room."

A feral bark of laughter escapes her throat at the suggestion. "I'm _not_ leaving," she says.

"Just until I'm done here," he says.

"But…" she begins, her tongue suddenly feeling numb and clumsy in her mouth. "What if—"

"Not that 'stylish widow' wouldn't be a good look on you, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that he'll _probably_ pull through," Napoleon says. The implication takes a second to land with Illya, who then glances up at the ceiling to avoid making eye contact with her. Napoleon pushes on, undeterred. "Go. Call Waverly."

Gaby bristles at being dismissed, but she recognizes the importance of letting Napoleon focus. She bounces on the balls of her feet anxiously for a moment, looking between the two of them: Napoleon with his sleeves rolled up to the elbows, Illya with his gaze still turned heavenward. Then she turns on her heel and flees out the door.

* * *

Waverly was supposed to contact _them_ , and he was supposed to have done it sixteen minutes ago, so the fact that they've had nothing but silence is already suspect. Gaby doesn't look forward to the conversation and doesn't appreciate that Napoleon is foisting the duty off on her.

Once she reaches out, it takes him only seconds to respond, and she imagines him sitting in an armchair, lit by a single lamp, hands steepled, waiting for them to come in so he can reprimand them.

"You're a strong contender for the headlines tomorrow," he says straightaway. Gaby bites the inside of her cheek. "But keep your fingers crossed. There's still time for a cruise ship to hit an iceberg."

"We've got the documents," she offers.

"Blueprints aren't going to help us sneak into a building unnoticed if everyone this side of the Atlantic knows they've been stolen," he says.

"We'll figure something out," she says. She can hear his scoff even through the static-filled line.

"What you've done is essentially render everything we've been doing these past weeks useless." He snaps sometime in the middle of the sentence and she closes her eyes tight, focusing on the geometric shapes that flash in her mind's eye. "This is… really… an unprecedented level of incompetence from the three of you. I've no idea what got into your head."

"It was Napoleon's fault," Gaby says finally, when she feels she's even-tempered enough to continue.

"I didn't put you in charge of the team because you're _my_ agent, Gaby," he begins, voice low again, and she truly _cannot_ handle the edge of disappointment that's replaced the anger. She stands, the cord on the handset dragging the cradle across the table as she goes. "I did it because those two are wildcards and I trust you to be able to manage them."

"That doesn't mean I should be responsible for every stupid mistake they make," she says.

"Well, you are. We both are," he says. She swears in German under her breath, but he either doesn't hear or ignores her. "One of the downsides to working with a team, I suppose."

She's silent for a long beat, and she can feel herself being petulant and difficult, but she can't bring herself to care.

"You're quicker than usual to throw Solo to the wolves," Waverly says after a half-minute passes.

"Illya was shot," she says by way of explanation.

"Ah," Waverly replies. "I trust he's all right?"

"He's…" She rolls her eyes even though there's no one there to see it. "He's fine," she manages, but it still seems like a falsehood.

"No harm done then," Waverly says.

"Except that we've mucked up your plans," she says, parroting his accent poorly enough that he actually laughs.

"A problem for tomorrow," he says. She doesn't like how sharply his demeanor towards her changed when she told him that Illya was hurt; it feels condescending somehow, and she's about to confront him about it when someone knocks on her door.

"It's me," Napoleon says from the other side.

"It's Napoleon," she relates to Waverly.

"Put him on if you get a chance," he says. She sets the receiver down on the table and goes to let Napoleon in, stopping halfway across the room to take a deep breath before she opens the door.

He leans against the wall just outside the doorframe, cool and composed as ever. His sleeves are still rolled up to the elbow but there is not a fleck of blood on him – he's immaculate. "I'm done in there," he says, gesturing across the hall with a nod of his head. "If you want to head back."

She nods, stepping out of the room. "Waverly wants to talk to you," she says over her shoulder. She hears him heave a weighty sigh and close the door behind him, and she's _almost_ able to muster up an ounce of sympathy for him.

* * *

When she pushes the door open, she finds the sitting room empty. The ice bucket and a couple blood-streaked towels still sit on the table, but Illya's nowhere to be seen. She closes the door behind her and leans against it as she surveys the room.

"Illya?" she calls out, tentative. She doesn't want to wake him if he's sleeping.

"In here," he says, and she pads over to the bathroom. He's bracing his weight on the counter, damp washcloth in one hand.

She sidles up to him, pushing him out of the way so she can sit on the counter, closing some of that large disparity in their heights. "Let me," she says, taking the washcloth from his hands and resuming his work. His hands come to rest on either side of her thighs, trapping her between him and the mirror.

She discards one blood-stained washcloth into the sink and picks up a second one, wetting it under the faucet. Before she goes back to washing him she leans her head against the mirror to consider his face. He looks in a very bad way, pale and clammy-skinned and sweating. Her mouth tugs into a concerned frown as she wrings the washcloth.

"You look like you're going to be sick," she says.

He only shakes his head in response, but she catches his cheek in her palm to still him and gingerly mops his brow. Back in the auto shop, the other mechanics had hurt themselves all the time. She'd been made to play nursemaid more than once, much to her displeasure, and they'd always told her that her bedside manner was lacking. Now, it seems to come to her much more easily than it did then.

"Did you honestly take a bullet for him?" she asks, not meaning to sound bitter – because she's not _supposed_ to pick one of them over the other, she's not supposed to be partial, and of course she's glad Napoleon is alright, but it's still – just – she doesn't know. It's too much of something or other.

Illya nods. "He'd do the same for me," he says, voice gravelly.

Gaby hums in agreement, fairly sure this is true, even for all Napoleon likes to pretend he's a lone wolf. She thinks back to the day after they'd finished their work in Istanbul, when she'd managed to talk them into spending a day or two at a beachside resort. She'd been eating at a waterfront café with Waverly, watching Napoleon and Illya as they stood at the edge of the ocean, waves lapping at their bare feet, hands tucked into their pockets. She'd wondered what they were talking about, just the two of them, but hadn't dared to interrupt, even going as far as to tilt the wide brim of her hat down over her eyes when they turned around to rejoin them.

They'd come back from their seaside tête-à-tête with a list of terms as to what their continued involvement with U.N.C.L.E. would mean. Waverly had seemed impressed with their resolve, given that they had essentially no other options besides the fugitive life. Gaby hadn't said much at all, only listening as they spoke, and thinking that it was – well – sad, in a way, how _damaged_ their time with their respective agencies had left them. She knows their distrust, their weariness, but she's been living in a war zone.

"If we're a team, we're a team," Napoleon had said to Waverly. "We're not your tools."

"No one is disposable," Illya had added, staring off down the beach at nothing in particular.

Illya had told her, later, how far their respective countries had been willing to go to obtain her father's research. They'd sent their best, knowing one of them would lose – and that had just been an acceptable loss, given what was to be gained.

There are no acceptable losses here, she thinks, catching a sigh in the back of her throat before it escapes her. The hand with the washcloth runs down the side of his cheek, his neck, comes to rest there, and she runs her thumb along his jawline.

Under her gentle fingertips, his eyelids droop closed. She scoots forward on the counter, hooking one leg around his, pulling herself closer to him. She catches his lips with hers, and he reciprocates only for a second before breaking away to kiss the skin of her neck instead. She lets her head loll to one side as she runs her fingers through his hair, her nails biting into his scalp just sharply enough to illicit a low groan from the back of his throat.

Before she loses her head any more than she already has, she pushes him away by his good shoulder, looking him in the eye.

"I didn't mean to frighten you," he says. She briefly entertains the idea of staying mad at him a little longer, just so he knows well and good how _much_ he scared her, but that damned look of genuine contrition on his face makes it impossible not to forgive him.

She slides off the counter, lacing her fingers through his and leaning up against him for a moment.

"Come sit," she insists, pulling him by his hands back towards the sitting room.

He's reluctant at first to let her lead him to the sofa, but as soon as they're sitting she can see how he is too heavy to hold himself up, and she doesn't think he's ever deserved to shrug the weight of the world off his shoulders more than he does right now. She pulls him down far enough that she can lay a kiss on the top of his head, and once he's down, he's down.

* * *

By the time Napoleon returns, Illya has fallen asleep with his head on her lap and one leg hanging off the sofa.

"This is a heartwarming scene," Napoleon comments, heading immediately for the liquor cabinet.

"It's been a long day," Gaby says, unable to drum up any more indignance or chagrin. They've really got nothing to hide from Napoleon, of all people, anyway. She watches as he fixes himself a drink and holds out her hand expectantly as he finishes. He sets the glass in her hand and makes a second drink before seating himself on the coffee table in front of her, where Illya had been sitting just an hour ago.

Pressing the cool glass against her warm cheek, she curls her fingers into Illya's hair, watching as Napoleon idly circles his glass in circles against the glossy surface of the table, pensive as she is.

She tries to summon up some words, anything to say, but comes up short. It's not often in her life that she has felt _content_ to be still and quiet– her life had been hard long before the Berlin Wall had ever gone up, and she knows it'll probably be hard in the future, too. For this moment, though, one quiet moment, it's enough just to be here, with a good drink and all three of them safe.

"Waverly has new orders for us," Napoleon says at length.

" _That_ ," Gaby says, reaching out to clink her glass against his. "Is a problem for tomorrow."


End file.
